This article discusses the function of dialectic in religious history, focusing on the works of two major sixth century Indian intellectuals and doxographers Bhāviveka and Haribhadra Sūri, who belonged to the competing Madhyamaka Buddhist and Jaina traditions respectively. The article studies how these two figures used medical metaphors for their dialectic purposes.

The academic world has undoubtedly become smaller in recent decades. Chinese-, Spanish-, English-, Arabic-, French-, Russian-, Germanand Italianspeaking academics, intellectuals, and feuilletonists discuss ‘the end of history’ or ‘the clash of civilizations.’We all seem driven by the cycles of boom and bust that govern the planetary intellectual marketplace. New concepts such as ‘modernization’...